I am a forest ecologist and population geneticist hoping to use DNA sequence data to study the evolution and adaptation of tropical trees to their environment. Currently trying to assemble tree genomes on a shoestring budget, using low coverage shot gun sequencing of single libraries read by Illumina. I am finding that these single libraries contain about all the information I need though I cannot get access to it using regular genome assembling programmes. So I am in the process of developing my own pipeline to recover phased contiguous fragments of the single copy gene rich regions in plant genomes. So talk to me about k-mers, sequence assembly, heterozygosity, and the power of paired reads.